


Man of Unclean Lips

by extraonions



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alastair/Dean Winchester (Implied), DisturbingThemes, Explicit Language, Gen, Graphic Torture, Missing Scene, Rape/Non-Con (Implied), Religious Themes, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-21
Updated: 2010-05-21
Packaged: 2017-10-09 15:40:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/88966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/extraonions/pseuds/extraonions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A week ago, if you'd told Dean Winchester that he'd be kneeling at an angel's feet, naked, in the rain? Well, he'd have laughed at you. Or possibly cracked your ribcage open, because Hell was Hell, after all. Yet, here he was. Naked. In the rain. Being baptized by an Angel of the Lord.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Man of Unclean Lips

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mummyluvr314](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=mummyluvr314).



> A pod!fic of this story recorded by [](http://pandarus.livejournal.com/287571.html)pandarus is available [](http://extraonions.livejournal.com/72324.html)here. Please see this story [](http:)at my livejournal for notes and credits.

## Man of Unclean Lips

> _And I said: Woe is me, because I have held my peace; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people that hath unclean lips, and I have seen with my eyes the King the Lord of hosts. And one of the seraphims flew to me, and in his hand was a live coal, which he had taken with the tongs off the altar. And he touched my mouth, and said: Behold this hath touched thy lips, and thy iniquities shall be taken away, and thy sin shall be cleansed. _
> 
> Isaiah 6:5-7

  


* * *

  


  
Dean wasn't sure what he expected by summoning up the thing that ripped him out of the Pit, using some of the heaviest mojo he'd ever seen Bobby lay down. Castiel. Some wannabe Hell lord playing footsie with Alistair, maybe. Forty years in Hell, and Dean had seen it all—two bit demons thinking to muscle in on Alistair's turf; take his toys and mark 'em up. Mark _him_. The brand on his shoulder burned, stretched down deep to touch sinew and bone.

  
A bad mo' fo, that was certain, after seeing the way this Castiel had burned Pamela's eyes from her sockets. Dean had felt that comin' on, even if he hadn't been able to stop it. A gathering presence, a sense of _other_, and the raised handprint on his flesh tingled and flared to life beneath the psychic's hand even as he warned her to back off. Dean had never heard of a demon that could do something like that, at least not from a distance; had no idea how Castiel compared to Alistair in terms of demon hierarchy and power.

  
Eyes were never Alistair's style anyway. He liked you to see what was coming, what was happening to your soul-flesh as he stripped it away in chunks and paper thin strips. He liked to see the _fear_.

  
Dean had tried eyes himself, for a while. He'd sliced through tongues and yanked out teeth or sawed jagged chucks from throats to try to still the screams, but the eyes… the eyes would still be screaming. Burning. He'd thought it would be easier, to take those hurting, hateful, pleading eyes out from the first, so he could get on with business. He'd popped them free and squeezed them through his fist, gouged them out, and once or twice even sewn the lids together with strings of tendon and a needle made from a splintered fibula.

  
He'd peeled them like grapes, opened up the corneas like flowers to lay bare the tangle of nerves and fluids and been shocked to utter stillness at the shimmering blue green ocean beneath, clinging to the back wall of the soul's eye like a globe that had been turned inside out. He'd stared, transfixed by the unexpected color, the pure _notredblackbloodyellow_ of it. Like sky. Like grass. Like _home_. Dean had found the world above buried deep inside the soul stretched out beneath his knife, and it was beautiful.

  
In Hell, there was no beauty except what could be found in suffering. No music except the symphonies of the damned, the screams and cries and whimpers coaxed out of ruined throats. No art except that which could be fashioned from blood and flesh and fear.

  
Alistair had complimented him for that one. Dean trembled beneath the demon's hand, cupped casually around the base of his skull, while Alistair licked viscous fluids from Dean's fingertips like jelly.

  
After that… well. Maybe he'd gone a little crazy. Crazier. He made an art form of it, carving the eyes out of each and every soul that graced his rack, dragging it out for hours with breathless anticipation of that spark, that beauty, that shimmering gemstone just beyond reach of his fingertips. Sometimes he did it quick, and then restored the soul's eyes to wholeness, just so he could do it over and over and over again.

  
The day Dean realized that he'd stopped taking out eyes so he didn't have to watch the suffering, and started doing it because it was _pretty_, he gave a cry of anguish and threw down his knife. Angry and tempted, Dean grabbed a hot poker and burned the eyes out, quick, watched soul-flesh sizzle and melt into blackened sockets, barely heard the screaming amidst the endless cacophony, the music of Hell. He would not look for it again, that beautiful blue green. He would not. Deep in his soul, Dean shuddered and begged forgiveness.

  
"It's a bit crude," Alistair commented, fingering the smoldering edges of the wrecked soul's left socket. Fresh meat; first day on the rack. He seemed amused. "Effective, though." It was the last time Dean had taken out a soul's eyes. Watching them suffer—watching their pleading looks, their hatred, and their defiance as he stripped them bare and broke them down—it was all Dean had left to remind himself that he had once been more. That he had once been strong.

  
That once, he had not been a monster.  


* * *

  


  
So he'd been expecting…. well, not this. Not some 'Angel of the Lord' nonsense. Not for him.

  
But… Castiel had _wings_. Just—the shadow of them, spread out majestically before Dean across the entire width of the barn, made his pulse quicken and every hair on his body stand at attention. Thunder rumbled in the background; thunderclaps in a cloudless night.

  
_angel?angelsarerealsavedmesavedme_

  
Angels are watching over you, Dean.

  
Holy shit, Dean thought while he stared in awe. He's really a fucking angel. Dean shook it off as best he could, his natural skepticism warring with the tiny, too-young part of him that wanted to believe. The foolish part that wanted to believe he was _worthy_.

  
"Right," Dean scoffed. "And why would an angel rescue me from Hell?"

  
Before the 'hounds, before dangling like a fish on Alistair's barbed hook, Dean had spent the better part of his existence sending evil sons of bitches downstairs. Monsters—the monsters belonged to Hell. Deserved Hell.

  
"Good things do happen, Dean." Castiel's voice was filled with sincerity and conviction. Dean swallowed. It didn't make any sense. Why him; why now? Why leave him to rot in Hell for forty years—four months, four months, four months, Dean chanted to himself—only to pull him out.

  
Monsters belonged in Hell.

  
"N-not in my experience," he choked out. Being alive? Being out of Hell, back with Sam? It was _golden_. But good things, no. Things like that didn't happen without strings. Without… debts.

  
And maybe Dean hadn't known, not really, just what he'd agreed to when he bargained with the red-eyed bitch for Sam. The reality of Hell was beyond what anyone could comprehend. Couldn't say with certainty whether he'd have done it, if he'd known. Wanted to believe he would have, for Sam.

  
But this whole fucked up, raised from Hell, talking with angels deal? Dean didn't know the score, _didn't remember leaving_, and didn't know what new version of Hell he'd sold himself into now.

  
Need to raise your brother from the dead? No problem. Just sign away your gutter soul. One year—it's a good bargain, Dean— and then a quick pop downstairs to settle the debt. _It's a firesale, and everything…. must… go…_

  
Good things didn't happen. Not for monsters. Not for Dean.

  
Castiel frowned then, and leaned closer. Dean felt frozen, like a bug under a microscope, a butterfly with its wings pressed out and posed with pins. "What's the matter?" the angel asked. Dean stared at Castiel with a thousand thoughts and memories of Hell crowded up in his throat. "You don't think you deserve to be saved," the angel said, wonderment in his tone. Like a revelation. Like he had seen Dean for the very first time.

  
"Why'd you do it?" Dean demanded, his face twisted in barely suppressed rage and pain and guilt.  


* * *

  


  
He was weak, and Dean knew it.

  
In Hell, Dean had held out as long as he could. He'd counted the passing years in anguish, then agony, and then, slowly, with each passing day, as the smallest of victories. It was never a question of Dean holding out forever. He'd known that after the first day on the rack beneath Alistair's tender mercies. He'd known it for truth, like words acid-etched on his bones, even as Alistair's blissfully cool hands soothed away the tremors wracking Dean's fevered soul. Offered up the proverbial apple; the drop of water for a man dying of thirst.

  
"Choose, Dean. It is Dean, isn't it? You can make this stop. All you have to do is say the word. "

  
His voice was perfunctory, almost bored. Dean was hardly the first soul to cross Alistair's rack.

  
Dean had refused, of course, but then proceeded to coolly critique Alistair's handiwork, offering suggestions to improve his technique. Dean's foolish show of bravado had lit a spark of interest in Alistair's cruelly indifferent gaze, a touch of admiration that Dean would have reason to regret in the many years to come… but deep down, Dean knew he couldn't hold out forever. If Alistair asked again… maybe not tomorrow, or the day after… but eventually. Dean would say yes.

  
Alistair never took eyes, so he could see the truth-- the stark, bitter knowledge-- in Dean's. One day. It was only a matter of time, and Alistair had it in spades.

  
Hell was eternal.

  
He'd broken, it was true. The endless ways that Alistair made and unmade him, days upon years upon decades with Dean as his preferred clay, and even now that Dean was breathing air and not sulfur-laden ash, he couldn't… he couldn't even….

  
But Ruby had told him… centuries. Dean had clung to that when he couldn't hold on to anything else. When the souls beneath him came and went without faces, when Dean found himself leaning into Alistair's possessive embrace, an unholy grin lighting his features because it was somebody else screaming—_notmenotmenotme_—when the screams and the blood and the wet slip-slide of viscera between his fingers started to feel like home… whenever Dean felt himself slipping, and becoming something _other_.

  
Forty years. Sammy'd be in his sixties. Just a little longer, Dean told himself. Keep it together, Winchester. Not a demon yet, not a demon yet, just hold out a little longer….

  
Eventually, Dean knew that every last trace of the man he was would be gone, consumed by Hell. He'd become a demon, and nothing would stop him from clawing his way out. Dean consoled himself with a promise that he'd hold out long enough for Sam to have passed on. The worst thing Dean could imagine, and after thirty years in Hell his imagination had a lot of material to work with, the very worst thing, was Sammy seeing the monster Dean had become. His little brother having to put Dean down like a rabid dog.

  
Those last ten years, after Dean had given in, had been the worst. At the end of each day, when Dean was drenched in blood and gore, Alistair would run cool hands down Dean's soul-flesh; traced down his spine and dug his fingers painfully into Dean's hip. Dean bowed his head and held himself still under Alistair's roving touch; petted and praised and stripped of all traces of the day.

  
And then, again, Alistair would offer Dean the choice.

  
"You're the boss, kiddo. How does it feel to be master of your own destiny?" Alistair traced a line down from the edge of Dean's left eye to his cheek before coming to rest at Dean's throat. His grip tightened.

  
"What shall it be today, pet? The knife… or the rack?" Alistair's smile was knowing. Dean didn't hesitate.

  
"Knife," he whispered.

  
Then the next mewling soul was dragged onto the rack, and Alistair pushed Dean towards it, and Dean went willingly enough, to tear and rip and destroy whatever shreds of humanity were set before him.

  
But not before Dean renewed his vow, his one last thread of sanity. He would be Alistair's puppet, be a demon, be reshaped in any image Hell desired. But not during Sammy's lifetime. He won't be the thing his brother had to hunt.

  
_samSammynotademonGodpleasenotyet_   


* * *

  


  
"Because God commanded it. Because we have work for you." Castiel's gaze was compelling, smoldering. Dean felt like the angel could see through to the very heart of him.

  
_God?demonsarerealGodwantsme?angelsarerealHellisrealrealreal _

  
"Work…?" Dean croaked out, his head spinning. He wasn't sure how to deal with the idea that he'd been pulled from Hell, not for some demon's whims, but on God's command. The idea of a demon power struggle was easier to swallow. After everything he'd done—there was no way. Why him?

  
The angel gave him no time to recover. "There is much for me to tell you, Dean, and I fear there is little enough time to do so."

  
"So, what…. You're here to bring me tidings of comfort and joy? Handy, the barn is right here. Where's the freaking star?" Shit, shit, shit! It wasn't even Dean's fault. Whether he faced demons or ghosts or now apparently even angels, smartass came standard.

  
Castiel stared at Dean, like he was trying to puzzle out Dean's meaning but wasn't quite succeeding. Dean swallowed uncomfortably, and wished, not for the first time, that he could get a grip on his tongue before it got him into anymore shitty scenarios.

  
Castiel tilted his head slightly to the right. "Unfortunately, my tidings are neither comforting nor joyful." Lightning flashed, sending flares of light and shadow throughout the barn. Dean heard the beginning patters of rain against the roof.

  
"Of course they're not," Dean sighed. "Well. Lay it on me."

  
Castiel shook his head. "My time is short," he said, "and there are other matters more pressing." The angel shrugged out of his blood splattered trench coat, and fingered the multitude of ragged holes left by Dean and Bobby's shots. Before Dean's eyes the holes were mended and the blood wiped away as if it had never been. He laid the trench coat and the jacket aside and loosened his tie.

  
"Nice trick," Dean said sarcastically. Is this shit even for real? he wondered. He felt like screaming. "This supposed to be a hint about where I stand on the heavenly to-do list? After _laundry_? C'mon, wings. Give me something to work with here."

  
Dean watched uneasily as Castiel set the tie next to the discarded trench coat before turning to Dean with an intense look in his eyes. "Strip," the angel commanded.

  
"Woah, woah, woah! What the fuck, dude?" Dean snapped; he took a hasty step backwards with his palms outstretched. "I don't care if you're the archangel Michael or the freakin' Pope!" Dean said. "I'm not getting naked!"

  
Castiel paused in the process of unbuttoning his now blood free shirt, brow furrowed. He looked honestly puzzled. "You misunderstand me, Dean. Hell has left a mark upon your soul. You must be cleansed," Castiel explained. He gestured to the oddments on the table—the candles and salt and incense and holy water from Bobby's ritual.

  
"It is well you summoned me. Everything needed to purify you is here. It won't take long." The angel removed his shirt, and Dean stared in wonder at his—the vessel's?—chest, where only the barest hint of a scar, fading quickly, was proof of Dean's attack. Castiel edged closer to Dean, backed him up to the edge of the table where Dean sat while waiting for Bobby's spell to take effect. Dean exhaled noisily and debated the wisdom of a flip remark about personal space. Fought the impulse to take up one of the iron blades scattered there and stab Castiel again, just for the Hell of it.

  
The faintest touch of irritation crossed the angel's face.

  
Then Castiel _touched_ him, his warm hands cupped gently against Dean's face, and Dean felt something rush over him, like a dream. He blinked, looking down at himself in disbelief. He was stark naked, as was Castiel. Dean's clothes were folded neatly next to the angel's. Cursing, Dean jerked back in alarm, but Castiel didn't let him go.

  
"Relax, Dean," Castiel commanded, lightly brushing his lips up to Dean's forehead, and Dean couldn't help it, he did. Just sagged forward against the angel, who caught him at the shoulders and pulled him into an embrace. Gripped him tight. He wanted to struggle, to snarl like the wounded, rabid dog he was and push away, but couldn't find the strength. Castiel was _warm_, like sunlight, and his warmth seeped like a balm into the part of Dean that had been so cold, so _lost_, the frostbitten edges of his soul that shattered into icy shards at Alistair's touch.

  
"You are safe here, with me," Castiel murmured against Dean's ear. "Now, you must do as I say."  


* * *

  


  
Outside the barn, the rain came down in a steady torrent. The air smelled of ozone and wood smoke.

  
Dean smeared his hands across his face, trying to wipe away the water that was streaking down his forehead and stinging into his eyes. He must be insane. He was kneeling in a puddle of muddy water in the middle of a goddamn thunderstorm, with a self-proclaimed angel standing in front of him, chanting an exorcism in faultless Latin.

  
And they were both naked. Dean was still having a little trouble wrapping his head around that one.

  
The rain still poured down around them, but it wasn't touching Dean. Although he couldn't see them, Dean could _feel_ Castiel's wings cocooned around him—feathers whispering _softsoftsoft_ against his dripping back.

  
Castiel held his hands aloft, gathering up rain in a cup made from his hands. He brought the water down to his lips and blew across it. Dean stared up at the angel. He contemplated the strange twists and turns of his life, that would bring him here to this moment. Before Hell, Dean wouldn't have been kneeling before an angel. He wouldn't have been kneeling, period.

  
Alistair had liked it when Dean knelt before him. And Dean? Dean hadn't minded so much, the kneeling. If he was kneeling, and watching Alistair, then he wasn't on the rack, writhing in unspeakable agony. And he wasn't _off_ the rack, causing that agony to whichever wretched soul was. Kneeling was safe. Familiar.

  
Castiel poured the water in his hands over Dean's upturned forehead. "I baptize thee, Dean Winchester," Castiel murmured, "In the name of my Father, His Son, and the Holy Spirit."

  
Twice more the angel gathered up water and cast his breath over it before pouring it out upon him. Castiel threw his head back, and lightning crashed, and for a split-second, Dean thought he could see the shadow of Castiel's wings, arching out against the night sky.

  
Castiel drew Dean closer to him, one hand threading through his short hair as Castiel bowed his head and prayed in an unintelligible murmur. Dean felt odd, sort of floaty and detached, and there was a low background hum emanating from Castiel's mouth, like a whole choir singing, but each voice was slightly off key, yet somehow still harmonious. Or a bunch of lip synchers, maybe. Christ on a cracker, he'd been saved from Hell by a Milli Vanilli reject. Dean snorted in amusement but quieted himself when Castiel tightened his grip.

  
Dean's face was mashed up next to Castiel's upper thigh, perilously close to the man's—angel's—whatever, the holy dude's pubes, his breath ghosting over the dark hairs. And maybe it should have been uncomfortable, awkward, but somehow there was nothing sexual about the position Dean found himself in, no matter that he was up close and personal with angel cock. Castiel didn't even _smell_ human. He closed his eyes and floated, the soothing litany of Castiel's words pouring over Dean like water.  


* * *

  


  
The rain had all but stopped when Castiel led Dean back inside the barn. Bobby was a still and unmoving figure on the ground, but Dean could see the slow rise and fall of his chest from where he stood. The barn, covered as it was from ceiling to floor in the religious symbols and protective runes that Bobby had painstakingly sprayed on the walls and floor, felt subtly different to Dean. Even the air felt different, charged in a way that Dean couldn't place, but suspected—Dean chuckled softly at his flight of fancy—was somehow holy.

  
He shook his head, and tried to focus on Castiel, who was moving purposefully towards Dean, the vessel's white dress shirt in his hands. Dean shifted awkwardly on the balls of his feet. "No offense, uh, Castiel. But that's your shirt, not mine." Dean definitely wasn't looking forward to putting on jeans while he was sopping wet, but clothes! Clothes would be awesome.

  
The angel quirked a slight smile at Dean, gave a soft exhale that was almost a laugh. "Turn around, Dean," he said. Dean knuckled water away from his eyes and complied, muttering under his breath about pushy angels.

  
He sensed Castiel's presence coming closer, and his skin prickled. How many times had he felt Alistair's foul presence behind him in Hell? Never knowing when the demon would speak, his breath like poison on the back of Dean's neck, never knowing when the demon would _touch_. Dean's shoulders hunched in— _needfearwantterror_— remembered anticipation. He struggled to remind himself that Alistair was a memory, but it was hard, so hard to set aside the decades of twisted up, conflicted emotions and reaction-responses that Alistair had ingrained within him.

  
Just when Dean thought he would have to bolt, he felt the lightest of touches on his back, growing bolder and more confident as Castiel worked. He was drying Dean's body with the vessel's shirt, with steady, efficient strokes across Dean's shoulder blades and down past the small of his back. Dean let out a surprised breath, but otherwise held still for Castiel's ministrations. The angel was humming as he worked; the sound low and soothing and coming from somewhere deep in his throat.

  
Thin as the shirt was, it never seemed to become sodden. Castiel continued to strip the moisture from Dean's skin, skimming down his ass all the way to his right heel in a long smooth stripe before repeating the gesture on the other side. The angel moved to stand in front of Dean, and set to work again, running the cloth over Dean's shoulders, through every dip and hollow of his throat and chest, and swiped gently at his abs. Then Castiel took Dean's hands between his, swathed in white linen, and proceeded to massage and dry between each of Dean's fingers, humming over them like a benediction.

  
It was mesmerizing.

  
Dean felt like a child, safe and loved; the sense-memory of his mother toweling him off with fluffy blue terrycloth juxtaposed itself over the reality of Castiel's touch. In his mind, Castiel's humming became the rumble of his father's voice, telling a bedtime story to coax Dean to sleep. Somehow, even as Castiel knelt to cup Dean's balls and cock in the soft fabric before briskly moving on to dry his thighs, Dean didn't lose that sense of _warmsafehomecherished_ that was everything he knew of the world before the fire.

  
Castiel finished finally; wiped away drops of water and all traces of mud from Dean's bare feet. The angel stood up smoothly and donned the shirt himself, although the angel left it unbuttoned. Dean was content to breathe, in and out, and he basked in the memories of his parents that Castiel had brought back to him. Castiel stepped over to the rest of his clothes and dressed. Dean noticed he left the suit jacket off and seemed indifferent to the tie, which Castiel ended up slipping into his pocket.

  
Returning with the trench coat draped over his arm, Castiel silently urged Dean to kneel with a light touch to his shoulder, and then ran his hand down to trace the raised, puffy edges of the handprint scar. Dean gasped at the intense sensations his touch engendered. There was molten sunlight travelling through Dean's veins, burning heat without pain. He felt boneless. Dean closed his eyes and drifted.

  
A sudden but pleasant weight fell upon Dean's shoulders. He opened his eyes to see that Castiel's coat—well, the holy tax accountant dude's coat, more like—was draped over Dean like a vestment. He sighed, still feeling very much content and at peace with the world.

  
Castiel was moving again, and Dean found himself watching the angel as he brought forth an amphora of pale oil from Bobby's stash. The scent of balsam wafted through the air as Castiel broke the seal and shook some out onto his thumb. The angel said something, some prayer or spell, though Dean couldn't understand the words. Not Latin. Something older, and far more powerful. He pressed his thumb to the center of Dean's forehead and made the sign of the cross with the scented oil. A moment later, and Castiel had salt cupped in the palm of his hand.

  
"Open your mouth, Dean." Dean felt like an idiot, kneeling there with his lips parted, but somehow he just couldn't disobey. Castiel could lament Dean's lack of faith all he wanted—there was power in ritual, ancient ritual such as exorcism, whether it was backed by God or not, and Dean couldn't deny the power he felt in Castiel's words and actions. "Be wise," Castiel intoned, as he placed a pinch of salt on Dean's tongue. "You are reborn in the Lord's image, and have been gifted with freedom of will." Castiel pressed the palm of his hand to Dean's forehead, and Dean closed his mouth, letting the salt dissolve.

  
Then Castiel licked his fingertips, and anointed Dean's nostrils with spittle, one at a time. "Dude, gross!" Dean tried to jerk away, but Castiel held him fast.

  
"Be still," the angel insisted. He licked his fingertips again and traced lines behind each of Dean's ears. Revolted, Dean started to reach up to wipe it away, but Castiel slapped his hand away. Dean huffed and crossed his arms over his chest. Castiel crouched down in front of Dean. His shirt was still unbuttoned, and Dean could see that there was no trace of a knife wound left.

  
"Hold out your hands," Castiel said, cupping his own hands together, and Dean stretched them out in an imitation of the angel's. Castiel nodded in approval. There was a fluttering sound, like the beat of wings, and soft susurrations that seemed to emanate from Castiel as he brought his hands to his lips and blew into them. A small spark of fire grew between the angel's palms, suspended in his hands and flickering like a candle flame. Dean's breath caught and he was transfixed by the sight.

  
Castiel was muttering again, strange guttural sounds that Dean couldn't understand but knew instinctively weren't the same as the angel's voice at the filling station, or the motel. Castiel brought the flame closer to Dean's hands, and lowered it gently into them. Dean had half expected pain, expected the terrible stench of charred flesh. But the flame was merely warm, pleasantly so, and Dean felt tears prickling at his eyes as the little fire guttered and shrank in his care.

  
He knew it was important, somehow vital, that the fire didn't go out. He held his breath and stared at the fire, willing it to grow, and live, and not shrivel like all the other dead things Dean held inside. Castiel's hands closing around Dean's startled him out of his reverie.

  
"It will grow," Castiel commented, pressing Dean's palms together until the little flame was swallowed up, not extinguished, but somehow made part of him. Dean furrowed his brow, not sure what the angel meant but not particularly wanting to find his voice to ask. Almost as if Castiel could read his thoughts—he probably could, Dean realized with some apprehension—he quirked a brow at Dean and said, "Have faith."

  
"Faith?" Dean snapped, suddenly angered by this angel and his fucking ideas. "I spent forty years in Hell… I did things I can't even contemplate and you coulda pulled me out—Hell, what about all those other souls down there, what about them, huh?—you coulda gotten me out at anytime, and you expect me to have faith?" He jerked his hands out of Castiel's grasp, balled them into fists on top of his thighs. "I was a monster, did your God tell you that?" He didn't meet Castiel's eyes.

  
"Dean," Castiel sighed, and Dean found himself looking at the angel despite himself. "I will not tell you that you are blameless. But you have been cleansed. I cannot take from you the memories of Hell. Those experiences are a burden you must bear—" The angel paused mid-sentence, an unreadable expression passing over his face.

  
Dean thought Castiel looked like he was listening to something, though Dean could hear nothing beyond the quiet nighttime sounds around the barn, the faint post-storm splashes and drips of water from the roof, and the comfort of Bobby's steady breathing a few feet away.

  
"I must go. I have been called," Castiel said, straightening from his crouch. "Prepare yourself, Dean. I shall return, and we will speak of what's to come."

  
Prepare myself…? Dean opened his mouth to speak, to argue, to demand answers, but subsided when Castiel placed a hand to his mouth and said, firmly, "Hush." Dean hushed.

  
Staring up into Castiel's eyes, Dean was captured by the deep, deep blue of them, with the barest hint of green. Like sky. Like grass. Like…. Dean gasped at the unsettling revelation. In Hell, all those years… that unforgettable hue… and he'd found it again, in Castiel's eyes.

  
"Turn away," the angel instructed Dean, not unkindly. "You must not look."

  
Dean found himself curled up against the wall of the barn, averting his eyes as the barn was bathed in a steadily increasing glow. Dean didn't turn his head, but once more he could see the shadow of wings spread out like a canopy above him, catching at the periphery of his vision. The light around him brightened, impossibly so. Dean could hear a rustling undercurrent of sound—a clamoring of voices, similar and yet so different than the constant din of terror that the torn throats of the massed souls of Hell could produce.

  
Dean was bathed in light, basked in the warmth of it. Even after the terrible, joyful light of Castiel's presence faded away completely, the warmth stayed in Dean. The endless chill of Alistair's corruption, of Dean's complicit filth, was like a faraway memory.

  
He felt… clean. New. Scoured out and somehow made ready for what purpose Dean couldn't even begin to guess at. He had no idea how long the feeling, and the conviction of it, would last. But Dean decided he would let himself float there, safe and warm and _sheltered_, for as long as he possibly could.  


* * *

  


  
Bobby woke slowly, a gradual return to consciousness reminiscent of lazy weekend mornings when he was still a child. He felt surprisingly rested, refreshed in a way that warred with Bobby's surroundings. The floor was hard and damp. Cold seeped up into Bobby's aching bones. He lay still for a moment, silently assessing himself.

  
Bobby couldn't remember what job had brought him out here to the ass end of nowhere and laid him flat. Poltergeist, maybe. It didn't feel like the back end of a weeklong bender anyway, though heaven knows he has had enough of 'em ever since Dean—wait. Dean. _Alive_. Out of hell, though what kind of demon had the power, Bobby didn't know.

  
It all rushed back to Bobby: the motel room, busted out window frames and glass everywhere, and Dean disoriented and bloody at the center of it. Dean's insistence that he and Bobby summon Castiel and leave Sam in the dark—and hell if Bobby wasn't uncomfortable with that, but maybe Dean was right to leave Sam out of it for now. Kid wasn't the same, hadn't been right in the head since Dean died, though Bobby couldn't blame him for that. Leastwise Sam was safe, which was more'n Bobby could say for Dean and him.

  
Ah, crap. Castiel. The summoning. Bobby remembered the barn doors crashing open, and Dean stabbing Castiel with Ruby's knife. Ruby's _useless_ knife. Bobby had swung the pipe, and Castiel turned on him, a frighteningly unruffled expression on his face as he reached out…. And now Bobby was here, and Dean was—

  
The ensuing rush of adrenalin was better than scalding coffee to wake Bobby fully. "Dean?" he croaked. Bobby rolled to the side and scrambled to his knees. His hand instinctively clutched at the pipe which was lying beside him, for all the good it would do… and then he saw Dean. Dean hadn't so much as twitched at Bobby's call, and dread rumbled nervously in the pit of Bobby's stomach.

  
There was no sign of Castiel. Bobby dropped the pipe and rushed to Dean's side.

  
Dean was hunched over, kneeling near the barn's east wall. A khanda, a Coptic cross and unicursal hexagram was graffiti'd on the wall behind Dean's bowed head. Dean was staring blankly at his outstretched hands. There was a pale tan trench coat—Bobby last saw it on Castiel—draped over Dean's shoulders, and the boy was naked as a jaybird.

  
Bobby cautiously crouched next to him. "Dean?" There was no response. Dean's hair was wet, and the rest of him looked slightly damp too. He frowned, taking in Dean's vacant expression and the way his lips were moving silently. Bobby wasn't sure, but he thought Dean was mouthing something in Latin. An exorcism? Fear shivered down Bobby's spine.

  
"Christo," Bobby said, steeling himself for Dean's eyes to turn black, for the boy to lash out, anything. His fear appeared to be unfounded, however. Nothing. Not willing to take any chances, Bobby reached inside his shirt for the ever present flask of holy water, fumbled the cap open with one hand, and splashed it on him. Dean didn't so much as flinch, although he stopped chanting and his gaze drifted over Bobby.

  
"Dean," Bobby said. "What the hell happened?" Bobby began methodically patting Dean down, checking for wounds or anything that would explain his lack of response. There was nothing, but Bobby caught a whiff of something—chrism. Maybe some kind of ritual? What fresh hell had Bobby unleashed by summoning the cursed thing? "Damnit, boy, answer me!" Bobby pleaded, clutching at Dean's shoulders.

  
"Dean…" Bobby tried again, his voice quiet with apprehension and grief. Dean shifted, and when Bobby pushed him away enough to check, he saw some life returning to Dean's expression.

  
"—obby?" Dean slurred, and Bobby heaved a sigh of relief that Dean was finally responsive. "Castiel. Not… demon." Dean's hand clutched weakly at Bobby's flannel shirt. Bobby wanted to shush him, wanted to grab Dean up and get the hell out of Dodge before the thing came back, but every good hunter knew that intel can make the difference between life and death, and if Castiel did return then Bobby had to be ready. Dean listed to the side again, his gaze turned inward.

  
He shook Dean a little. "Dean? Damnit, wake up, son. If it's not a demon, what the hell is it?" Bobby demanded. Dean blinked up at him.

  
"…angel…" he said, and his voice was quiet; almost reverent. Bobby froze. At the very possibility, something—fear and relief and disbelief—shot through Bobby like an arrow. An angel? An angel pulled Dean from hell? Could it really be that simple?

  
Bobby closed his eyes. Demons were a reality in Bobby's life, but he'd never thought to see the day when angels would slog through the mud of earth alongside the likes of Bobby. If they had—if Castiel was actually what Dean claimed—heaven help them all, because bad times were comin'. He couldn't help but feel apprehensive about what this meant in the greater scheme of things, but from where Bobby was standing, it was still an answer to his prayers.

  
Thank you. God, thank you, he thought. Bobby stood, ignoring the familiar creak of his knees and the twinge of protest in his back as he pushed himself up.

  
Bobby cleared his throat and sniffed a bit before hefting Dean upright and pulled the boy's arm up around his shoulders. The trench coat fell from Dean's shoulders to pool on the floor. Dean still seemed groggy and distant, and too quiet, but he figured Dean'd had a bit of a shock and was therefore entitled. Bobby felt much the same. "C'mon, son," Bobby said gruffly, "Let's get you decent and back to Sam."

  
In Bobby's haste to rouse Dean again and get the fool boy dressed and moving, Castiel's trench coat was left behind, forgotten.

  
Outside the barn, it began to rain once more.  


* * *

  


  


> _And I heard the voice of the Lord, saying: Whom shall I send? And who shall go for us? And I said: Lo, here am I, send me. And he said: Go, and thou shalt say to this people: Hearing, hear, and understand not: and see the vision, and know it not. Blind the heart of this people, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes: lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and be converted and I heal them. And I said: How long, O Lord? And he said: Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land shall be left desolate. _
> 
> Isaiah 6:8-11

  


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End file.
